Belize to Address Key Treaty Obligations

This afternoon there was a closing ceremony for a three-day Treaty Body Capacity Building Program for state officials which began on Tuesday. Later this year, Belize is internationally obliged to submit reports on International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. Senior officials from key ministries of Government participated to learn the functions of the treaty bodies and discuss Belize’s opportunities and challenges in the implementation of these two conventions. Belize’s roadmap for the upcoming reports was also discussed during the workshop. We hear more from one of the facilitators of the workshop, May Karin Marianne Friedrich of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.

May Karin Marianne Friedrich

May Karin Marianne Friedrich, UN Human Rights Officer

“We’ve been here training state officials how to do that reporting on the treaty, focusing on the convention to protect all migrant workers and also the convention that looks into elimination of all racial discrimination. So it’s these two treaties specifically that we have been focusing on to prepare state parties to report.”

Aaron Humes

“Do we have any record in terms of whether Belize is on track in terms of complying with all the – there are so many of them – but in terms of meeting all these requirements for these international treaties?”

May Karin Marianne Friedrich

“I think what’s been great we’ve seen here is the political will. So it’s been correct that Belize has signed up to several of these treaties, and in this regard they didn’t report to two of these treaties that I mentioned, and therefore we are doing this capacity building effort because I understand from the political side, that there is an interest to prioritize specifically these two treaties and make the report this year. So I am very pleased to see that we’ve had a very high level of participants – from, I counted yesterday, about nine ministries – and so that’s a good outcome from our side.”

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